April 12, 2011

Reticule & Armored

by Carrie Murphy

Reticule

The poem is a navy blue leather purse that used to belong to your grandmother.The poem is an embroidered tapestry-style satchel.The poem is a vintage silver clutch with a Lucite handle.The poem is a sow’s ear, a silk slipper bag, a bejeweled tampon case.

where do you put your poems/where do you keep

The poem is my purple L.L. Bean backpack with my initials in dingy white.The poem is my Pucci-print jewelry pouch, tucked at the bottom of the suitcase.The poem is my polyester pocket.The poem is mine.

the poem on your arm/the poem in your hand/open the poem/inside the poem

put it in the poem/the poem/white space/lipstick bathroom scrawl/words sewn in the lining/mints&tobacco&aspirin/metaphor/metaphor/metaphorpoem as purse as dark wet cunt/compact mirror reflecting up

Armored

I’m wearing a gold signet ring so when I punch they’ll know who did it. I’m carrying an umbrella with a thick carved handle so I can poke back, hard, against the driving drops & the little rain-slickered ladies. Spike-heels are an obvious weapon, but I use them to pick seeds out of my teeth or to carve initials into the mahogany sideboard at the rest home. This rosary weighs three pounds. This turban will never topple; a ruby as big as your eye, velvet soft like the skin on the inside of your thigh. Sequinned scabs & a polka-dot trance. Silk that never stops rustling. I want to show you my rhinestones, I want you to lick my leather gloves to their tips. Feel the belt where it buckles. I can fit your moth balls into this cocktail ring; see how they sparkle in the light?

Bio: Carrie Murphy is from Baltimore, MD. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Maryland, College Park, and her MFA at New Mexico State University. Her poems have appeared in PANK, Keyhole, Prick of the Spindle, and other journals. Her chapbook, "Meet The Lavenders," is forthcoming in early summer 2011 from Birds of Lace.

promissory

Welcome to Delirious Hem

ORIGIN STORY: It was 2006. Some of us wished the women poets we admired would write more about poetry and poetics, experimental, post-avant. Some of them weren’t writing about these things at all. Why not? They’re busy, some of us surmised. Some of them were writing about these things, but some of us were greedy, and wanted them to write more. Some of them were men, and some of us wanted some of them to write about experimental women poets, gender performativity on the page, masculinity via grotesque, etc. Wanted some of them to write about some of these things more/at all.

What if some of us built a platform? What if the parameters were informal, relatively boundless? What if the form invited conversation and huzzah?

But some of us are busy, too. Some of us can’t possibly fit one more dish on our plates, and some of us can’t possibly spin one more plate in the air, and some of us can’t possibly...

Well, here’s what some of us offer all of us: It’s a blog, it’s a poetics journal, it’s a platform. From time to time, a post will appear. It will be exciting, provocative, fresh, or bombastic. It will go with your eyes. It will never stop stop making sense, it will always love you, it will probably work.

Discussion in the comment boxes below is ecstatically encouraged, with the understanding not all members of Pussipo are likely to agree on any given topic (oh how rare, but how delicious the disagreements too), not all contributors herein are members of Pussipo, each contributor is the rightful possessor of her or his own opinion, and some contributors may be more inclined to respond to comments directed their way than others. Which is just to say what should be obvious: We are various. We aim to mix it up.